SAM out classing all other DPS

[Nominous]

No one complained about Black Mages at 60 because they were substantially harder to play than Samurai is. There was little to no margin for error to get good dps out of BLM. Many people I know have switched to Samurai simply because it's so easy compared to Monk. It's also far more rewarding.

Edit: Also, I do agree that other classes need buffs, rather than SAM getting nerfed. My only problem is I don't trust SE to not overbuff any classes. It's easier to nerf than buff, it's part of why you see nerfs more than buffs in most games period. AST was a good example of what goes wrong with buffing a class in the 3.x series. People shrugged off WHM.

Difficulty is not always an objective concept. Some people might find BLM easy because they're accustomed to casters. Some people might find MNK braindead because they understand it's flow.

Also. People choose to acknowledge the more difficult notions and complexities within the BLM rotation, probably because it's more readily apparent. People choose to ignore the complex notions with SAM, probably because the community at large knows so little about them. As a subjective statement, MNK is hard to pick up, easy to maximize once learned. SAM is easy to pick up, but extremely taxing to maximize with.

Even just on the surface level. What happens when you lose a buff as MNK? Since you have branching combos, you just choose the buff you need to reapply and you're set. On SAM, you have to actively think about which Sen you have active. If you lost your speed buff, which is a part of your Flower Sen combo, but you already have the Flower Sen active, how will you avoid overlapping the Flower Sen with your buff combo? Do you complete it and waste a Sen? Or do you use Hagakure early, and waste the potential 40 Kenki from not finishing your other 2 combos? Or do you want to use your one Sen to reapply your DoT element early instead? Or maybe you want to finish activating all 3 Sen without your buff, and then Hagakure to keep your GCD rolling. Or maybe you want to finish all 3 combos without your buff, and then Midare because there's a mechanic? That's just one aspect of SAM, and it's immediately more difficult concepts than MNK has in their rotation.

As far as nerfs and buffs go... It's all within the aftermath of either, and the mindset that goes behind either action.

Buffing a Job results in restoring the current players' faith in the Job they love. It results in bringing more people to the Job. It is an indirect admission that the Job is underperforming, or otherwise unappealing, and that they want to make them more appealing.

Nerfing a Job results in almost nothing positive. You're almost always taking away one of potentially multiple 'fun', 'exciting' or 'unique' aspects of the Job (in quotes for a reason). You're taking a Job that people may have enjoyed, and lessened their enjoyment with it, unless it's a nerf that brings them up in other ways. It's almost specifically a means of making the Job less appealing, in efforts to make others... more appealing by comparison? It will result in people dropping the Job, even if it's a 'fair' nerf, because nobody wants to perform the same, but be rewarded less for it. If you nerf something, it just creates reasons to buff it in the future. 9 times out of 10, nerfing is the wrong decision.

It's not surprising they'd rather buff things. And even then, it becomes an argument of what's more important to the community. Performing at or slightly above the expected standard, and having their Job feel like it's fun, with an exciting playstyle? Or performing similar amounts of DPS as another Job, even though it's a part of said Job's identity as opposed to their own Job's identity?

Right now, at least in this thread, people are far too concerned with SAM's identity, as if it's competing with their own Job's identity. Spoilers- It's not, unless you're maybe a DRG, MNK, or BLM. And at least 1, if not 2 of those (hint: not DRG) are competing just fine.

[Oscura]

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It is not always an objective concept, that is correct. However, the consistently high numbers and constant evidence of the massive difference in DPS numbers is staggering. The fact of the matter is that if Samurai is constantly outperforming other classes, it's either really easy, or too strong. The average player can't even manage playing this game very well and I've seen players with weaker skill-sets perform well with Samurai. A BLM's difficulty has nothing to do with "being accustomed to casters," there were plenty of people who played SMN and/or healers who specifically avoided it because the skill ceiling for that class was so high in Heavensward. Also, Monk is hard to pick up and easy to maximize? I greatly disagree. Edit: (I just realized you stated that subjectively, but regardless.)

You say Samurai taxing, and your reasoning for this is...decision making? That's the hard part about it? A bunch of what-if scenarios of mostly meaningless conjecture that only happen at certain moments? The whole reason Monk is so difficult is because unlike Samurai if you lose your greased lightning stacks your damage takes a massive hit. You have to regain your stacks all over again. Right now Monk only has two buttons to properly restore their stacks, one of them being on a 60 second cooldown (which requires you to get hit AND take yourself out of DPS stance, a DPS loss) and another on a 3 minute one. You are arguing from a sheer dummy standpoint. Managing mechanics on a Monk and keeping your stacks up, while keeping your buffs up, in order to keep doing the most damaging parts of your combos, is the optimal way to play. If you keep having to constantly apply Twin Snakes and Demolish more than you're doing Snap Punch and True Strike, you're doing poorly. Being able to weave Forbidden Chakras at any point in your combo if you get lucky with crits or brotherhood, a function that purely relies on RNG. Fact of the matter is, Monk play is more reactionary, and Samurai play is based around decision-making. Like you said, the difficult is dependent on the user, but I don't really see that many strong Monk parses, do you?

The worst thing that can happen to a Samurai is that they have to decide positives and negatives. That means people who have a calmer thinking process can play it easier. A lot of people cannot play on reaction either because they're simply not good at it, or they may find it too difficult for their own reaction times. It's partially why some people play FFXIV, the GCD and combat speed is very slow in this game. Monks directly contradict that, having the fastest GCD casting in the game and having a mechanic that requires you to have as much uptime as possible. If it was so easy to master I would see far more advanced monks in any portion of this game's lifespan, and I haven't. Meanwhile I've seen more Samurai than I've ever seen Monks performing very strong DPS and high levels.

As for buffing vs nerfing, I agree with this yet again. I just don't trust Square Enix. I'm always an advocate for buffing other classes over nerfing specific ones. I just don't trust SE to do it properly. I would rather not read in a few months complaints from Samurai players about how DRG, MNK or MCH was overbuffed and they bring more utility + damage than them.

As for SAM's identity vs my job's, I couldn't care less. My only 70 class is Red Mage. I just personally think SAM is too strong compared to the other classes with very little risk involved. Nothing SAM does influences my class' position in any sort of hierarchy, and my class works well with it. I didn't like WAR in 3.0 either.

[Nominous]

The fact of the matter is that if Samurai is constantly outperforming other classes, it's either really easy, or too strong.

You say Samurai taxing, and your reasoning for this is...decision making? That's the hard part about it? A bunch of what-if scenarios of mostly meaningless conjecture that only happen at certain moments?

I would rather not read in a few months complaints from Samurai players about how DRG, MNK or MCH was overbuffed and they bring more utility + damage than them.

As for SAM's identity vs my job's, I couldn't care less. My only 70 class is Red Mage. I just personally think SAM is too strong compared to the other classes with very little risk involved. Nothing SAM does influences my class' position in any sort of hierarchy, and my class works well with it. I didn't like WAR in 3.0 either.

To be honest, these points here are a lot of what's wrong with this thread. In order-

The immediate reaction to SAM numbers being so high, is that either they're too strong, or it's too easy. It's an assumption, and hardly a fair one. By that logic, I guess SMN and MCH were either too powerful, or too easy in Creator Savage's patch, since they topped most of the charts, right? It's about as baseless as can be.

Yes, decision making and on-the-fly math/judgment calls make SAM difficult. No, it's not meaningless conjecture, or dummy situations. For one, I can't use Third-Eye>Seigan on a dummy. It entirely depends on my knowledge of a fight, if I get chosen for a mechanic, or if I'm predicting a mishandled mechanic (Seigan is unlocked as a proc after being hit with Third-Eye active). Anyone arguing that SAM is easy never mentions maintaining maximum uptime of this 15 second cooldown ability, and how efficient it is, potency wise, per resource spent. Something that sometimes won't matter if you don't get chosen for a mechanic, but will if you do. Using this ability leads to overall higher DPS because it allows for more resource to be used over the course of the fight.

In Susano, getting chosen for the rock, or rooted as a lightning changes things drastically as well. As given with the previous example, if chosen for one of those mechanics, how will you deal with not wasting a resource you've gained? Similar in concept to using a weaponskill on WAR in 2.x/3.x with maxed Wrath/Abandon, Sen should not be stacked. What do you do, then, if you are chosen for one of those mechanics, and you DO already have a Sen active, but need your buffs from the corresponding Sen combos? Since your buffs are tied to Sen, you either waste that resource, or find a solution for not wasting them. And all of this is going on while you're doing mechanics, watching your Kenki to make sure it doesn't hit too much of a surplus, while watching Hagakure in relation to your current Kenki to make sure you don't go over 100 Kenki when you use it, while watching how many Sen you have, just in case you need to reapply your DoT before consuming Sen with Hagakure, while watching Guren's cooldown which costs half of your gauge, while making sure you only use Guren at 70 Kenki if you're coming up on a Midare so you can have 20 left over for another ability, while making sure you get max uptime on Third-Eye>Seigan. Oh, hitting positionals too. Oh, and cast times on Sen abilities, while trying to dodge AoE's, or place yourself for mechanics, or place yourself for positionals before the cast.

We can't talk objectively, so I can only give opinions on why MNK ends up easier. I'll decide against that though, because ultimately, I don't want to get into min/max type of conversations about MNK. The better conversation, is that with min/max talk, ANY Job can be seen as having complexity. I've raided as NIN, MNK, and DRG before SAM. I've looked at the guides and documents for BLM. I've dug through SMN documents with pages upon pages of math and details of the best rotations for different situations. Every Job in this game operates on that same idea. There is skill in bringing out the maximum DPS of any Job in this game. The varying degrees depend on how much you personally care about jumping down the rabbit hole, and how difficult the Job feels for you. If we're gonna start nerfing/buffing Jobs based on feels and assumptions though...

And you should care about the identity of a Job vs. your own or others. That's the thing. As DPS, it's hard to really differentiate one from the other as far as identity goes, because the ultimate goal is to demolish everything, it's just how we go about it, right? It's easy to understand why PLD shouldn't do more than MCH. It's a tank, that's not it's goal. However, we've gotten to a point where some DPS have support (in differing ways), and others don't. That creates precedent for analyzing the identity of a Job, since that will better balance the sum of it's parts. Not to mention, sometimes the identity of the Job contributes to the ultimate balance of it. SAM, and BLM being the best examples of that (and BLM needing some love in that respect as well). If you don't care about that, then we should just play a game where no DPS Job has any identity, get rid of all support skills, and just press blank icons to see big numbers, because that's the only thing that matters on a damage dealer, apparently.

[Oscura]

The immediate reaction to SAM numbers being so high, is that either they're too strong, or it's too easy. It's an assumption, and hardly a fair one. By that logic, I guess SMN and MCH were either too powerful, or too easy in Creator Savage's patch, since they topped most of the charts, right? It's about as baseless as can be.

And you should care about the identity of a Job vs. your own or others. That's the thing. As DPS, it's hard to really differentiate one from the other as far as identity goes, because the ultimate goal is to demolish everything, it's just how we go about it, right? It's easy to understand why PLD shouldn't do more than MCH. It's a tank, that's not it's goal. However, we've gotten to a point where some DPS have support (in differing ways), and others don't. That creates precedent for analyzing the identity of a Job, since that will better balance the sum of it's parts. Not to mention, sometimes the identity of the Job contributes to the ultimate balance of it. SAM, and BLM being the best examples of that (and BLM needing some love in that respect as well). If you don't care about that, then we should just play a game where no DPS Job has any identity, get rid of all support skills, and just press blank icons to see big numbers, because that's the only thing that matters on a damage dealer, apparently.

I'm only going to reply to these two points mostly because I think we can both agree that on SAM difficulty vs MNK difficulty we'll probably never agree and it's purely based on opinion. Albeit I don't find MNK difficult at all, I am mostly speaking from what I have heard from others or over the years of playing the game.

My only problem with the first point is the whole thing regarding MCH and SMN. Yes while they had high numbers and topped charts, the problem is how often and how many did so. No one can deny that there is a staggering amount of Samurai topping charts. I have never seen nearly as many machinists or summoners doing so during creator or any period of 3.x series. Yes they often did high numbers, but it was based on a small pool of extremely skilled players, whereas the Samurai numbers we are seeing have a much bigger pool. It is not baseless, or an assumption when it's very clear from the sheer amount of Samurai that exist with high parsing numbers compared to previous classes.

Let's not forget that Square's goal was to make classes easier than they were in HW, and you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone that SAM right now is harder if not just as difficult as playing Machinist or Summoner optimally in 3.x. I'd say they succeeded in making things easier, personally.


As for me not caring about balance because I don't care about identity. All I can say is, what? My statement was explicitly to display that my stake in Samurai's balance, and more importantly why I think it is too powerful, is not personal nor is it out of spite. Your statement implied that people with like-minded opinions to mine simply felt Samurai was overlapping them or replacing them. I was simply telling you in my case, that is not true. Pretty much everything you stated in this segment of your post is irrelevant to what I said. I said that Samurai does not directly influence Red Mage's identity, and I meant that it does not do so in a negative light, therefore I have no personal grudge with them.